Possibly a slightly misleading title, as I'm awaiting delivery of the stated card...an XFX (Pine) graphics card. My trusty HD 4890 (RV790 factory OC model) is being replaced and soon to find a new 'home' running in X-Fire in my partner's PC...I'm aiming to install Cat 11.12 on that 'rig' and run the older SDK, which will allow GPU crunching again on that 'rig' whilst still having far better fps in games, as was wanted.

However, what I'd really appreciate, is advice on the best Catalyst package for a 6870, bearing in mind that this is a General Purpose PC; so I'm looking for the best overall package and not necessarily the one that gives the best fps or the fastest 'crunch', but a 'happy median'. I also have a number of the Lunatics installer packages....36 - 40. To be honest, I've gone round in circles trying to find anything that even resembles a definitive answer, for nearly a week! The possible combinations are staggering, to put it mildly!

Possibly a slightly misleading title, as I'm awaiting delivery of the stated card...an XFX (Pine) graphics card. My trusty HD 4890 (RV790 factory OC model) is being replaced and soon to find a new 'home' running in X-Fire in my partner's PC...I'm aiming to install Cat 11.12 on that 'rig' and run the older SDK, which will allow GPU crunching again on that 'rig' whilst still having far better fps in games, as was wanted.

However, what I'd really appreciate, is advice on the best Catalyst package for a 6870, bearing in mind that this is a General Purpose PC; so I'm looking for the best overall package and not necessarily the one that gives the best fps or the fastest 'crunch', but a 'happy median'. I also have a number of the Lunatics installer packages....36 - 40. To be honest, I've gone round in circles trying to find anything that even resembles a definitive answer, for nearly a week! The possible combinations are staggering, to put it mildly!

You appear to be running Win XP on your computers. If you want to run Raistmers' latest OpenCL Apps, you will need to run at least Catalyst 11-12 or 12-1. You can't run any Catalyst newer than 12-1 with XP, so, the choice isn't too difficult. I've had better success with 11-12 as I seem to receive fewer AstroPulse Access Violation (0xc0000005) Errors with that version. If you're lucky enough to not receive that error, either of the 2 versions of Catalyst would be fine.

I am using CAT 11.12 with my HD6870. I did try some of the CAT 12.x drivers, but ended up going back. As I was having some weird playback issues when using VLC. Some kind of dropped frames or stuttering. I haven't bothered with any newer ones since.

The current apps are built on SDK 2.6. So until that requirement changes I probably don't bother looking at the newer drivers.
I figure if it isn't broke, don't fix it.SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours Join the BP6/VP6 User Group today!

Yes, I realised at work, this morning that XP was going to limit my choices and I'd be looking at something like the same Cat Suite I'm currently running (11.12) on my 4890, and I also had problems with the later Cat 12's drivers. I'm running quite an old version of SDK on the 4890...so I'd better look at running something a little less ancient!

It is also looking increasingly likely that before too long, I'll have to commit to something like Win7 64 bit....maybe dual-boot using a second drive, to keep the capability of still running all my XP32 progs. A pity in a way, as XP Pro has proved to be extremely stable for me.

Yes, I realised at work, this morning that XP was going to limit my choices and I'd be looking at something like the same Cat Suite I'm currently running (11.12) on my 4890, and I also had problems with the later Cat 12's drivers. I'm running quite an old version of SDK on the 4890...so I'd better look at running something a little less ancient!

It is also looking increasingly likely that before too long, I'll have to commit to something like Win7 64 bit....maybe dual-boot using a second drive, to keep the capability of still running all my XP32 progs. A pity in a way, as XP Pro has proved to be extremely stable for me.

I havn't found a program yet that I ran on XP that won't run on Win7 (both 32 & 64 bit) so you should be fine. ;-)

Yes, I realised at work, this morning that XP was going to limit my choices and I'd be looking at something like the same Cat Suite I'm currently running (11.12) on my 4890, and I also had problems with the later Cat 12's drivers. I'm running quite an old version of SDK on the 4890...so I'd better look at running something a little less ancient!

It is also looking increasingly likely that before too long, I'll have to commit to something like Win7 64 bit....maybe dual-boot using a second drive, to keep the capability of still running all my XP32 progs. A pity in a way, as XP Pro has proved to be extremely stable for me.

I havn't found a program yet that I ran on XP that won't run on Win7 (both 32 & 64 bit) so you should be fine. ;-)

Cheers.

Sometimes Windows7, or Vista, may prompt with a message saying something like "This application has known compatibility issues, are you sure you want to use it". I just check the box for don't tell me thing again and hit yes. Otherwise I also haven't had any issues running apps.

However the 64-bit OS's will no longer run any 16-bit applications. So if there are some old 16-bit apps you are fond of you would need to dual boot for that purpose. Anther option would be to use a VM or something of that nature.SETI@home classic workunits: 93,865 CPU time: 863,447 hours Join the BP6/VP6 User Group today!